Ervand Abrahamian, The Coup: 1953, The CIA, and The Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations

In August 1953, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated the
swift overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader and installed
Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in his place. Over the next twenty-six years,
the United States backed the unpopular, authoritarian shah and his
secret police; in exchange, it reaped a share of Iran’s oil wealth and
became a key player in this volatile region.

The blowback was
almost inevitable, as this new and revealing history of the coup and its
consequences shows. When the 1979 Iranian Revolution deposed the shah
and replaced his puppet government with a radical Islamic republic under
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the shift reverberated throughout the
Middle East and the world, casting a long, dark shadow over U.S.-Iran
relations that extends to the present day.

In this authoritative
new history of the coup and its aftermath, noted Iran scholar Ervand
Abrahamian uncovers little-known documents that challenge conventional
interpretations and also sheds new light on how the American role in the
coup influenced U.S.-Iranian relations, both past and present. Drawing
from the hitherto closed archives of British Petroleum, the Foreign
Office, and the U.S. State Department, as well as from Iranian memoirs
and published interviews, Abrahamian’s riveting account of this key
historical event will change America’s understanding of a crucial
turning point in modern U.S.-Iranian relations.